world_war_2wikiaorg-20200214-history
World War II Wiki:Manual of Style
This is the World War II Encyclopedia's Manual of Style. This can help you learn some basic things about writing articles and how to make your work look professional. These tips also help make all of the wiki's work consistent No Bias Bias is extremely bad when making a wiki because it is full of made up facts and opinions. It is okay to like certain aspects of history because that is why we write about history! Even so, don't write your opinions into articles as this will diminish the quality of the work. Also remember to put phrases like this "The H8K is arguably '''best flying boat of World War II" instead of this "The H8K '''is the best flying boat of World War II. This eliminates bias because it tells both sides of the argument by saying many think the H8K is the best flying boat, but still acknowledging that some do not think so. Try not to misspell words Like bias, it only diminishes quality and if there are too many misspelled words, your work will look very... iffy. Of course the occasional misspelling is okay for that is why we can click the edit button. Reference! When reading things, people want to see where your information comes from. Wikipedia and other wikis are not good sources, but you can use wikipedia's sources which can be helpful because they are already hunted down. This is the code for referencing and citing is like this and Also, when citing books, remember to put it in the correct Chicago style citation format. Here is a guide. Categorize and try to add pictures. Categorizing helps viewers to find other articles similar to the one that was edited. That is why every page ''MUST ''be in a category. Adding pictures gives the reader/viewer a better way of looking at something. For example, say you have an article about a tank and the viewer reads that a .50 MG is mounted on a pintle mount and that it is mounted on top of the turret. The viewer perhaps doesn't know what a pintle mount is or what it looks like, but a picture allows the viewer to see what the pintle mount is so they can get a better understanding of it. Don't feed the trolls If a troll vandalizes a page, fix it and lock the page and the next probable page. If the vandalism continues, tell an administrator to block the trolls IP Address and to block the troll from chat. Lastly for this section, do not spam pages to drive traffic to another website. If you are discovered doing this, you will be blocked immediately. Do correct formatting. What this means is that for a normal piece of text, you do not put it in Heading 2 or Heading 3 font size. It just looks awful and does not help the quality of the article. Opening pictures are not to be put in the center or on the left hand side of an article either and no infoboxes are allowed. However, the 2nd image in an article must go on the left hand side and then the 3rd must go on the right again. Try to link to other pages. This helps viewers navigate the wiki so they don't spend time searching through tons of results in the search box. Redirects also help to prevent this. Completeness In order to count as complete, a page must contain all of the basic and extra information along with references. Some information is sometimes left out and this is ok. This can be caused by lack of information or too much information. Although, there is a limit to how much information can be left out and if the article looks small, it usually is not complete. Here are some checklists that can help when creating pages about vehicles, aircraft, or ships. These are just examples and do not list everything needed Vehicle Checklist *Engine *Fuel *Weight *Length *Width *Armor *Armament *Range *Transmission *Suspension System *Crew and passenger capacity *Type i.e Tank Destroyer, Heavy Tank, Armored Car *Date released to front lines Ship Checklist *Beam *Type *Draught *Length *Displacement *Range *Armament *Crew and passenger capacity *Power system i.e turbines, engines, etc Article Organization Each article must be properly organized i.e. The first paragraphs of a vehicle article must contain statistics while the next section, Variants, must be under a heading three title and here the information must contain all the variant information. No listing though, only paragraph format. The last section, is History and it must be under a heading 2 title. If say the vehicle in question has extensive prototype history than one can put heading three titles ''Prototypes ''and ''Combat Service ''for more clarity. A heading three ''Notes ''section may also be added if there is extra information that will not fit into the article. The final title is ''References ''in heading three font. Below the ''References ''title, add the tag Article Messages Remember to add the correct messages to articles. Do not put at the bottom of an article "More information coming soon", put at the top of the article so no one will edit it. If a page is incomplete, than put at the top of the article. For more information about box messages, go here . Don't use "you" "you" is improper to use when writing articles and there are other ways to replace it when writing. For example, when writing about a grenade, do not put "you need to pull the safety pin and then it is ready to be thrown", put this instead "to arm the grenade, one must pull the safety pin and then the grenade is ready to be thrown." Too many images The amount of images you can put into an article is about three maximum, but in reality it is according to how large the article is. Usually three is enough to fill the page. If you have more images, please put them in an image category like the Image Archive so others can see them. Try not to put galleries in articles, it is allowed, but it does not look as nice as regular images. More Help *World War II Wiki:Citations *Policies Category:Organization